The citizen-led initiative is a proud Idaho tradition that lets everyday people make laws directly. This process ensures that when legislators prioritize special interests or ignore the will of the people, Idahoans have a tool to set things right. Unfortunately, Republican politicians are threatening your rights once again with House Bill 2.

The legislation would require citizen initiatives to pass with 60% of the vote instead of a majority. Therefore, 40.1% of voters could block proposals supported by the other 59.9%. No state in the country requires a citizen-led law to meet this threshold. Letting a minority of voters decide isn’t how democracy works.

Citizen initiatives are a lifeline for Idahoans. When property taxes shifted onto homeowners to benefit corporations that make large political donations, a citizen-led initiative created our homeowners’ property tax exemption. In 2011, when new laws were to force students into online classes backed by for-profit companies, Idaho voters stepped in and repealed those laws, keeping kids in classrooms.

Initiatives give regular people a way to fix what the legislature gets wrong. But there’s a catch: lawmakers can rewrite any law the people pass.

This begs the question: If the powerful Republican supermajority can undo ballot measures in the blink of an eye, why do they keep trying to weaken your ballot initiative rights? It’s because citizen initiatives shine a spotlight on their failures. And when politicians roll back the will of the people, it harms their credibility. Making citizen initiatives nearly impossible is an attempt to intimidate voters from even trying and save politicians from discomfort.

Take term limits. A few decades ago, Idaho voters passed a term-limits initiative. When self-serving legislators repealed it, they took a hit to their reputations.

More recently, Idahoans pushed to increase education funding by asking the very wealthy to revert to the tax rate they used to pay. Republican leaders called a special session and passed a law to rewrite the tax code after the initiative took effect. This put a repeal of the citizens’ initiative on auto-pilot before the people even voted. The move was buried in a bill that increased education funding to respond to the people’s demand. With a goal met, the initiative backers pulled it from the ballot. Legislators had all the power to successfully reject the initiative. Still, many resented that regular people put pressure on them to act.

Idahoans don’t like politicians meddling with our rights, regardless of party. Even with their limitations, citizen initiatives are a check on government overreach. That’s something we can’t afford to lose for ourselves, nor for the generations that come behind us.

Let’s reject HB 2 and keep power where it belongs: with the people of Idaho.

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Lauren Necochea
Idaho Democratic Party Chair